


Angel of the crooked wings

by obaewankenope (rexthranduil)



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Angst, Dark, Depression, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Ineffable Idiots (Good Omens), Injury, M/M, Major Character Injury, Suicidal Thoughts, Whump, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-21
Updated: 2019-07-21
Packaged: 2020-07-10 08:11:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19902574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rexthranduil/pseuds/obaewankenope
Summary: Fighting with Aziraphale, losing him to discorporation after threats from Hastur to kill him, facing down a wall of fire, and then his own boss—and ex-employer—did something that Crowley fears cannot be undone.Something heknowscannot be undone.





	Angel of the crooked wings

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from _[Antiphon for the Angels](https://www.poetseers.org/spiritual-and-devotional-poets/christian/hildegard-of-bingen/hildp/angels/)_ by Hildegard Von Bingen. I thought it rather fitting.
> 
> This was a prompt from [iggysfanblog](https://iggysfanblog.tumblr.com/) on tumblr don't shout at me, it's their fault this is so angsty! Honest!
> 
> Prompt was:  
>  _After reading your last writing I went feral over the idea of Crowley disappearing for periods of time and Az worrying about him so consider Crowley starts seeming more and more bedraggled and snippy every time they see each other, then doesn't show up to the bookstore for a few weeks. Az worries more and more until he gets hit with a train of pain and misery and realizes that Crowley is depressed and in danger. Az finds Crowley in his flat, feathers ripped out and eyes wild in a full blown panic attack. Crowley won’t let Az near him so he has to calm the demon down from afar. Eventually it comes out that all this is because Crowley hates what he is (demon/fallen angel) due to what Hell and Heaven have done and simply wants the pain and misery to end. He had hoped that with his ugly black feathers gone, he could find redemption or, at least, peace. ~fucker_
> 
> ~~I tag them as "The Fucker Anon" on my tumblr lmao~~

Crowley has always hated his job. Not because he’s a bad demon—sort of the job description, being bad—but because he’s not always in the mood to commit Evil Acts and Evil Acts only. He’s a good Tempter and an even _better_ Thinker Upper Of Plans but being a demon didn’t give him those skills or make him so good at them. Neither had being an angel. They were just part of him; Crowley. The core personality so to speak. Everything else was just dressings and trimmings to make him look Fancier and Mightier and Holier and Unholier depending on the uniform required for the job.

Once upon a time he’d had white wings—to the human eye at least; they were really every colour in existence because angels were everything too—and he’d found them to be both beautiful and very constricting in a confusing way. It’s an absurd feeling when one has wings capable of flight, but one Crowley feels, nonetheless. For celestial and infernal beings, feeling trapped when possessing wings is about as crazy as defying heaven and hell to preserve one little mudball full of evolved monkeys. 

Naturally then, Crowley excels at it in the same way he excels at saving humanity; disastrously.

Falling had been an impulsive act by Crowley; sort of a “maybe this will change this feeling” kind of thinking. To be fair, it had. It’d changed a lot of other things—turning his wings black had been an aesthetic choice to hide the faint scarring from the ten-thousand-mile free-fall and the boiling sulphur he’d only _briefly_ landed in [1]—but it didn’t really change the sense of feeling penned in all the time. In heaven it had been rules and regulations and expectations and not thinking or asking questions. In hell it was the same just with a bit more give if you could lie well. 

Crowley lies _exceptionally_ _well_[2].

Before the Fall, Crowley had felt like he’d been trapped in a hamster cage that wasn’t designed for housing a rabbit. After the Fall, it’d been like he’d been re-homed in a larger space that didn’t look like a cage but was. It’d just took him a little while to find the edges. The trapped feeling always returned. 

When Crowley had first met Aziraphale—just another angel in the Garden back then—he hadn’t expected the feeling of Relief that the angel had elicited in him. His wings had revealed themselves against his will—something he controlled ruthlessly from then on—and the angel had shielded him from the First Rain. The angel felt as trapped as Crowley to the demon’s senses but, whereas Crowley was aware of his predicament, Aziraphale seemed innocently unaware of how trapped he was. Crowley wasn’t sure such a situation was a blessing or a curse. Six thousand years later and Crowley still isn’t sure.

The only changes from Falling for Crowley were illusionary at best. His eyes were a Choice He Made Himself and not a visual sign of punishment for rebelling. Crowley hadn’t rebelled, not really. He’d just taken the last train out of heaven and hitched a free ride to hell. Desertion. That’s it. Crowley had deserted heaven, not rebelled against it. Completely different. So he gained a new employer who was a bitter ex-employee of their parent company, it was all the same in the long-run.

From angel to demon, a simple enough transition that gave Crowley a little more rope with which to hang himself.

Whenever Crowley is with Aziraphale, his entire being is released, the trapped feeling fading away to a faint buzz rather than the constant klaxon sounding in his mind. Unfortunately, however, Crowley has never been able to just _be_ _around_ _Aziraphale all the time_. That’s why he’d come up with The Arrangement. Mutually beneficial—as it reduced travel commitments and such—it offered Crowley the easy excuse to check in on Aziraphale whenever the klaxon became Too Much. It worked fantastically enough, until 1862 when Crowley had asked the angel for holy water and set off an argument he hadn’t intended to start. Over sixty years of not seeing Aziraphale would have been impossible for Crowley to endure had he not slept for most of it. He’d needed the sleep to escape the klaxon that got louder and louder the longer he didn’t see Aziraphale. But then the Blitz happened and the church and that damned bomb and- it was like they’d never argued. It was there, of course, but it didn’t make it impossible to see each other and Crowley had dropped by the bookshop like clockwork running on a decade chime instead of hourly. Even the 70s hadn’t caused more issues for them, even with the- the- what- the angel’s rebuke. Yeah…

Then it had all gone to shit when Crowley had been given the “honour” of delivering the End Of The World and for almost a decade, the demon had been in near constant contact with Aziraphale for an entire decade. It had done something to him—weakened him in some inexplicable way—but it was the week before the world ended that _broke_ _him_. Fighting with Aziraphale, losing him to discorporation after threats from Hastur to kill him, facing down a wall of fire, and then his own boss—and ex-employer—did something that Crowley fears cannot be undone.

Something he _knows_ cannot be undone.

Wings—now inky black by choice—itch and shift restlessly no matter what Crowley does. Whether he’s with Aziraphale or not, the blaring alarm of _TRAPPED! TRAPPED! TRAPPED!_ sounds on a loop. The sense of being caged rears its head every time a primary moves, a secondary twitches. It’s suffocating him, leaves his heart pounding like it’s trying to escape his chest, his lungs tight and constricted by bands of steel ever tightening and denying his body air.

Seeing Aziraphale makes him twitch and want to claw his skin off, smash windows and cut into his chest and slice out his heart and just be done with it. The urge is stronger and stronger the longer he’s around Aziraphale after the Not End so he visits the bookshop less.

Part of it is fear, that much Crowley knows. Fear of _what_ exactly eludes him however. Not knowing tightens the bands across his chest more and makes his skull feel like it’s crushing his brain as though it was in a vice. Every time he sees his wings out of the corner of his eye—whether they’re manifested on the physical plane or just there on the astral plane that humans aren’t really built to see or interact with—Crowley wants to hiss and swipe at them; lashing out at the one constant he’s ever had in his life.

His wings may be black now but that had been an intentional _choice_ on Crowley’s part. White was the colour of heaven. The opposite then would be for hell. White makes every colour there is, black is made of those colours; it devours them. Perfectly fitting for a demon. But his wings are Divine and have always been part of him; Crowley cannot remember a single moment where he did not have them [3]. They’re a part of him that he wants to _hate_ because he doesn’t Belong Anywhere and they’re a reminder of that fact. The once represented the Divine then Infernal and now… now they’re just There and he _loathes_ them[4].

The first feather he tears out between moults elicits a wonderful feeling of _power_. It doesn’t hurt for more than a moment, feels more like a particularly sharp scratch on sensitive skin but it grants him something Crowley hesitates to call relief. He doesn’t think there’s really a word he can use to describe what he feels after. The second and third feathers are coverts like the first, torn out after he flees the bookshop when Aziraphale gives him such an openly _kind_ look it has Crowley’s heart pounding. It gives him just enough of a sharp slap to regain the control over his body that slipped away. But pulling coverts is like trying to staunch an arterial wound with a tissue; it’s just _Not Enough_.

The first primary he plucks is… a lot more painful. Wonderfully painful. He feels like he’s torn off a fingernail with no warning. The rush of feeling that burns through him in time with the hot and cold nerve-destroying flashes is fantastical. His wing snaps close to his body, tucks itself up as small and close as it can as instinct draws the injured appendage close to him. Crowley finds that he can tolerate his wings when they’re trembling and twitching from pain and not- not whatever they usually twitch from. But, all too soon, the pain fades away, magic soothing the pain and turning it to a pale, ever weakening echo of the blanked-out agony it began as. And, just like with the coverts, he pulls more and more of them as time goes on.

Aziraphale never comments on his state though Crowley knows he notices. It’s not hard to see really, what with the way Crowley looks like a human that hasn’t slept in a month; skin paler than usual and a muted grey, hair lank and messy in a way that speaks of lack of care rather than an aesthetic choice, clothing looser and worn and frayed like they’ve never been before. Crowley _also_ knows the angel can see how close to his body he tucks his wings—so tightly against him that it looks as though he doesn’t have them anymore when he’s stood or sat a certain way. But, although the angel sees it he never directly comments, Aziraphale does make pointed comments here and there: “you look like you could use a drink dear, I’ll make some tea; have a new type to try that apparently works wonders for when you’re feeling down”, and “well this quilt is quite warm, too warm for myself really, why don’t you have it—I know the sofa is in a draughty spot after all” and so on. Aziraphale is unlike Crowley in regard to his wings—the angel uses them often even if they’re not visible on the physical plane [5].

Eventually the release he experiences from pulling a feather or two here and there isn’t enough. It’s never enough. He chased the pain that each feather results in, plucking more and more from muscle and bone and tender flesh until Crowley’s wings are wrecked and destroyed by his own hands. Even though the pain becomes constant, his magic just not enough to contend with the aching burn that is like an undercurrent to everything, it’s not enough. He needs more. He needs-

Bones are easy to break if you know how to go about it. Crowley—unfortunately—does.

* * *

Aziraphale first notices it about a month after the world failed to end—though it had given it a good go what with the Kraken, fire and brimstone, the horsemen riding and all that stuff. Since then he’s become quite used to seeing Crowley regularly—a new fixture in the bookshop, not unlike a particularly snippy statue that happens to walk, talk, and perform minor feats of evil for the sake of it—compared to before the whole Influencing The Antichrist plan came about. The intermittent six thousand years of meetings here and there across the world were—for Aziraphale—quietly enjoyable. But when Crowley had suggested they amend their Arrangement after the antichrist was born… Aziraphale admits now that he’d been tempted from the get-go [6]. Throughout those eleven years Aziraphale saw Crowley regularly in the Dowling residence—tending to young Warlock with a surprisingly gentle manner—and the two immortal beings had retired to a shared cottage on the grounds; a sort of lodging house for full-time workers that had been miraculously occupied by only the two of them [7]. After all that, Aziraphale has to admit, he’s become quite used to Crowley always being around; so much so that when the demon starts to show up less and less, Aziraphale starts to Worry with a capital W.

He doesn’t do anything about it at first, mostly because he’s not certain what he _can_ do. Crowley is, after all, quite sensitive. Although Aziraphale will never say that to the demon’s _face_ —he values his books too much to offend the demon to such a degree that Crowley would ruin several in recompense for the Unwanted Compliment—it _is_ one of the attributes of Crowley that Aziraphale finds most appealing. That this demon is capable of committing great horrors and instead chooses to petty temptings and chicanery to annoy humans into choosing to sin; it is a far cry from the nature of other demons Aziraphale has met [8]. Crowley would deny it with his last breath but the demon has a softer heart than Aziraphale ever will—the angel is quite aware that it was he and _not_ Crowley who had aimed a weapon at a child and hadn’t hesitated to fire after all; Aziraphale is _much_ more capable of being ruthless than others would first believe [9].

Although Aziraphale doesn’t understand the appeal, he _is_ aware that Crowley likes to sleep. Something about the lack of consciousness appeals to the demon just as much as drinking does—although Aziraphale isn’t sure it’s for the same reasons. Aziraphale likes a drink himself—he doesn’t experience hangovers like humans, nor does his body start to shut down after too much alcohol as is the case for humans so mortifying behaviour is his _only_ deterrent—but he knows Crowley uses alcohol to dull his feelings. Considering how much kinder Crowley is than he should be for a demon, Aziraphale can at least comprehend why alcohol is such an appealing thing to the demon. Over the centuries, the angel has come across many a human who have lost themselves in their vices, trying to escape whatever haunts them in their waking hours. It is saddening to think that Crowley is like those humans with tortured souls.

The demon admitted to him once that he’d drank himself unconscious after receiving a commendation for the Spanish Inquisition [10]. So it’s no surprise that Aziraphale is reasonably concerned that Crowley has drank himself into a stupor for some reason and that’s why he hasn’t been by the bookshop [11]. He resolves to visit the demon’s flat after closing the bookshop tonight—that he had never visited before they averted Armageddon and he’d been homeless—and check up on Crowley. In a purely platonically friendly way of course.

However, when the wave of pain slams into him as he’s sorting books on shelves that didn’t exist before Armageddon was cancelled, Aziraphale realises he should have acted much, _much_ sooner.

Aziraphale is in the bookshop one moment and halfway across London in the next, appearing with a soft rustle of feathers in a dark flat he’s been in only once before. The pain washes through him, runs along his wings and all the way down to the tips of his alulas, primaries and secondaries before it peters out in the coverts. He ignores it, rushing through the flat toward the sound of high-pitched, muffled keening that tears into the angel more viciously than any pain ever has. The sight that greets him as he shoves the bedroom door aside—possibly causing permanent damage to the hinges, not that he particularly _cares_ at that moment—is enough to stop Aziraphale in his tracks.

The sight- it would turn the stomachs of even the most soulless of demons.

There are few things that demons and angels consider to be sacred but wings are one of them. No angel touches another angel’s wings without permission. No demon harms another demon’s wings without punishment. Between the two groups, injuries to wings are some of the most serious taboo acts either side can commit in battle. Aziraphale has seen hardly more than a dozen cases where wings have been harmed—and all of those were during the Rebellion led by Samael. Only She has every caused permanent harm to the wings of her creations—the Fallen Ones—but even that harm pales in comparison to what Aziraphale sees now.

Like a bird, the wings of a Divine or Infernal creature are delicate, designed for flight and do _not_ take kindly to being injured. Although they’re delicate they can withstand a lot of abuse—courtesy of them not being entirely physical or astral but a mixture of the two which enables a lot of leeway when it comes to injuries; also magic, but that’s a whole other explanation—but they _do_ have their limits as to what can and cannot be repaired without Divine Assistance.

Aziraphale fears that this is beyond even the Divine.

“Crowley!” Aziraphale cries out, voice soft and pained and bleeding worry. “Goodness Crowley, what happened?” 

The angel approaches the demon quickly, reaching out to gently touch him but freezes when Crowley’s entire body twitches and flinches away from him.

“Don- Don’t touch me,” Crowley weakly croaks, an arm blindly flinging itself out from his curled-up form in the corner of the room, nails black with blood, hands stained and Aziraphale’s heart feels like it’s breaking in two. “Don’t—please don’t.”

“Okay Crowley, okay,” Aziraphale assures the demon, carefully lowering himself onto his haunches as close to the demon as Crowley will allow him. “Wh- what happened—if you don’t mind my asking?”

The demon chokes out a laugh and it’s seven different kinds of wrong because it sounds so, so broken. It hurts Aziraphale just to hear. “H- had a bit- bit of- well, I had a bad day, angel.”

Bad day is… well it’s an understatement to say the least. Aziraphale stares at the demon that’s hiding in the corner of his own bedroom, blood and feathers everywhere, and the angel wants to just Wish It All Away. The pain he can feel emanating from Crowley in _palpable_ _waves_. The suffering that underlies the pain. The blood and feathers and salty tears Crowley has shed without consent.

He wants to just Make It Better but Aziraphale knows that some things cannot simply be Wished Well.

“Well then, bad days are—well—they’re bad, as the phrase suggests,” Aziraphale says, longing to reach out and at least touch Crowley on the arm but he doesn’t. Not when Crowley seems to barely handle his presence in the room. “But bad days _do_ end, dear.”

Crowley’s head rises a little from where it’s sort of tucked between knees and covered with arms adorned with torn sleeves. “What- what about bad millennia, angel? When do _those_ end?”

The demon shifts and hisses in pain and Aziraphale doesn’t think, he doesn’t hesitate; he reaches out and curls a hand around Crowley’s arm, feeling the moment the demon freezes at the contact.

“I don’t know when those end, Crowley,” Aziraphale says softly, carefully, and he doesn’t remove his hand from Crowley’s arm even though he can feel the muscles twitching beneath his fingers. He doesn’t back down because Crowley needs him now and there is Nothing that will stop Aziraphale from doing what needs to be done for his demon.

Yes. _His_ demon.

It’s about time Aziraphale admitted it to himself. Crowley is as much his as Aziraphale is Crowley’s.

“But I do know these past six thousand years have been a lot more tolerable when you’ve been beside me.” It’s a confession and an offering to the demon and Aziraphale feels like the scales have been tipped, the balance upset, because it’s _him_ offering the reassurances and the temptings to _Crowley_.

But Aziraphale has always tempted Crowley, in his own way. He just hadn’t really noticed before.

“Whenever you weren’t around, I’d hide in my books so I could try and ignore the feeling in my chest that clawed at me because _you_ weren’t there to quieten it,” Aziraphale whispers. “I felt such relief that night I saw you in the church even as I worried over your safety because that- that ache faded away the moment I saw you.”

The angel leans close to the demon, resting his head on Crowley’s arm, his forehead touching torn cloth and heated skin. It draws a sound from Crowley that is so very broken in a different way to the keening of before. “I cannot imagine how it felt to- to no longer know I was alive, to think I was dead,” Aziraphale continues and Crowley trembles beneath his hand and head at the words. “To be so lost and alone and not care anymore because- because your reason was gone. But Crowley—” Aziraphale lifts his head—noting absently that Crowley’s sunglasses were missing—and looks the demon in the eye “—please don’t let me find out. _Please_.”

“I- I’m... I’m just so... _tired_ , angel,” Crowley admits. “I’m tired of it all. I just- make it stop,” he begs, hands coming up and gripping at Aziraphale. “You used to make it _stop_.” The demon’s head falls forward, drops down against Aziraphale’s chest. “ _Please_ make it stop.”

When angels cry the cosmos cry with them. Some angels affect the cosmos more than others. Archangels have been known to cause floods and water to form on planets where there once was no water. Aziraphale has seldom cried in his life even though he has wished to at times. Now- now Aziraphale cries [12].

The sky outside darkens and thunderclouds amass quicker than they have ever amassed. The BBC weather will comment on how surprising it is for a thunderstorm to occur with so little warning but it’s just entering into September and the weather is always strange around the end of summer. No human will know that the weather is the result of a principality crying in pain and anguish for one who is Fallen and broken in ways he has never before realised.

Aziraphale pulls Crowley close, carefully wrapping his arms around the demon in as gentle a way as possible, avoiding the injuries he doesn’t quite know if he can Heal. He will try regardless and put every ounce of will and love—it is love that he feels, why deny it now?—that Aziraphale has and He Will Heal The Fallen Angel.

Even if it ruins him to do so.

* * *

* * *

[1] It was still long enough to cause some significant damage to his body and wings but his core strength had remained largely untouched. A few cracks and gouges that he’d carefully repaired over the years; nothing serious.

[2] So well, in fact, that he’s capable of _lying_ _to_ _himself_ about Important Things for eons.

[3] All six of them, in fact.

[4] They are a stain on him. A mark. A constant, unending reminder. Like scar tissue he can’t not see in the mirror every day, that he always feels and Knows is there.

[5] Aziraphale has a habit of unconsciously drawing his wings around himself on the astral plane when engrossed in a book or focused on something requiring his attention. The angel draws those wings close when he’s disturbed and although humans do not see them they feel an unexplained Spiritual Breeze when the wings move when Aziraphale is startled. It’s quite endearing even if it makes Crowley’s skin crawl at the casual use of his wings by the angel.

[6] Of course, fear of punishment by heaven and hell—mostly hell with Crowley—had made him wary and it had taken Crowley framing the amendment in a manner that befitted Thwarting Evil for Aziraphale to finally agree, but the idea of sharing responsibility with Crowley for something… it had greatly appealed to the angel. _Greatly_.

[7] They had spent most of their time initially comparing notes on what they were Teaching young Warlock in order to try and make him neutral at least before their discussions had branched off into more friendly topics and evenings were spent in a sort of enjoyable companionship neither had experienced before. Of course, in hindsight, the poor boy would likely need some intensive therapy considering he wasn’t the subject of a divine prophecy and thus didn’t quite grasp some of the things Aziraphale or Crowley taught him. Humans were _frighteningly_ limited in that regard—but it made them wonderful at the same time; at least humans _pushed_ their limits whilst angels and demons sort of wallowed within their constraints.

[8] Witnessing Crowley sneak children aboard Noah’s ship just as the flood began cemented in Aziraphale’s heart that the demon is far kinder than any other demon and does not commit Evil because _he_ is evil but rather because it’s _his_ _job_. If given the freedom to choose, Aziraphale is certain Crowley would perform miracles and temptings as and when he pleases. The Arrangement solidified that belief and after the world didn’t end, Aziraphale has watched and waited for Crowley to broach the subject himself. But the demon has remained quiet on the matter.

[9] He choose, however, to be nice and kind.

[10] Crowley had been in the right place at the right time to receive praise but the demon had simply been enjoying the sights. Infernal luck and all that however had seen him credited with someone truly evil.

[11] Even this is desperate thinking by the angel—something Aziraphale well knows. He thinks it regardless, willfully ignorant and hopeful that he’s right when he knows full well he is not.

[12] As a cherubim, Aziraphale’s power is slightly less than that of a saraph and archangel such as Gabriel in all things save anything to do with his duties as a principality. Crowley hasn’t cried except the day he lost Aziraphale and on that day it rained for hours in London.

**Author's Note:**

> So this is... open-ended... no idea if it's gonna be continued butttttt _shoulda specified a happy ending iggy ;)_ ~~I'm joking... mostly~~.
> 
> I had some bad news today and I guess I've kind of used it to push the last bit of this out. Props for emotional apathy being productive writing material.


End file.
